The Choice
by AZGirl
Summary: A series of nightmares forces Steve to make a choice about his personal crusade. Spoilers for episodes up to 2.09 Ike Maka.


**Title**: The Choice

**Summary**: A series of nightmares forces Steve to make a choice about his personal crusade.

**Disclaimer**: Hawaii Five-0 is not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.

**Spoilers**: For episodes up to 2.09, Ike Maka. Includes one line of dialogue each from episodes 1.01 and 2.06.

**A/N**: I've wanted to write something in response to how episode 2.06 Ka Hakaka Maika'i ended for a while now, but couldn't think of anything until I saw a BTS pic of 2.10 Ki'ilua (no spoilers in this fic). And then somehow this story evolved into a sort of bridge between episodes 2.09 and 2.10.

**ooooooo**

The nightmare always starts out the same.

Steve and his squad are transporting Anton Hesse across the South Korean terrain. His cell phone rings and Anton says, "_You should get that. You don't speak to your father nearly enough_."

Heart going faster than a hummingbird's, he answers the phone, but instead of his dad and Victor Hesse on the other end of the line, it's now Wo Fat and some member of his 'ohana. The other members of Five-0, Mary, Joe, even Kamekona, Max and now Lori were the ones tied to a chair in his house with his greatest enemy pointing a gun to their heads.

What's said between him and Wo Fat is different from what was said between him and Hesse, but the gist is that it was Steve's fault his friend and/or loved one was in that chair. That he should've dropped the investigation before it had come to this. That it was Steve's fault Kono or Chin or the most frequent of his dreams' guest stars, Danny, was dead. His fault that the dream always ended the same – with the sound of a gunshot and him yelling "No!" out into the night as he woke up.

Ever since Makoto had been tortured and murdered, he'd been having this particular nightmare more and more frequently. Joe's words at the time – _You continue down that road, son; you gotta ask yourself… How many more lives is that going to cost?_ – had in that moment been boldly countered, but had long since begun to eat away at him. Doubt had begun to chip away at his resolve to find his family's nemesis and bring him to justice.

And the semi-frequent nightmare of the day his father had been so brutally taken away from him had morphed into this current manifestation. The players had changed but the location and the end result were always the same. Someone he cared about was dead.

Most nights he jackknifed awake, heart beating wildly, sweat pouring and the word _'No!'_ dying on his lips. On many of those nights, he would lie back down, use the sheet to wipe away some of the sweat, use deep breaths to calm his heart, and then he would hope that sleep would overtake him once more. About half the time he would succeed and would manage another hour or three before waking with the sunrise.

The other nights, the nights where Mary or Danny had been in the chair, he usually ended up sitting next to the water waiting for enough light so he could either run or swim or both. Sometimes, when he couldn't wait any longer for the sun to rise, he'd find something to do that required his concentration. And if his collection of weapons or his house was cleaner than the most sterile of hospital environments, then so be it. He just needed something – _anything_ – to occupy his mind and keep those awful images from replaying in his head, if only for the briefest of moments.

The nights where it was Danny or Mary were becoming more and more recurrent, and on those days he could barely look his best friend, the man who was like a brother to him, in the eye for fear of seeing images from his nightmare. His mind sometimes simply refused to let go of the gruesome visuals of that fatal wound upon his friend's face and head and they often became superimposed over the alive and ranting version before him.

Those lost hours of sleep were now beginning to affect him on the job. He was irritable, his temper was short and all the progress he'd made over the last year in terms of police procedure or interacting with witnesses seems to have been mostly lost. He'd even begun withdrawing from his 'ohana by turning down invitations to hang out together – irrationally thinking that by distancing himself from them that they'd be safer.

He was positive that his team knew something was wrong with him and he avoided any situations in which they might try to corner him. He also deflected or changed the subject of every conversation that seemed to be headed in a direction he did not want it to go.

Having Danny stay at his house these last weeks had been a major mistake on his part. Steve hadn't been thinking when he'd offered his couch for Danny to sleep on, he'd just done it. It was his best friend, how could he not offer it to him? And now his friend's life was, to his mind, in even more danger than was normal for them. Aside from the increased threat of danger, his partner living with him had also turned into a challenge and a test of his fraying nerves.

The first night he'd had the dream while his guest was downstairs on the couch, his outcry upon awakening had apparently been louder than the TV his friend insisted he needed in order to sleep. His partner had, he later guessed, stormed up the stairs and burst into the bedroom gun in hand thinking Steve was in danger. The ex-Jersey Detective had instead found his friend just attempting to stand up after having successfully freeing himself from his tangled up bedclothes.

Steve had managed to convince Danny that he was, if not fine, then at the very least okay and that it was only an old dream about a long ago mission that had gone wrong (which was at least mostly true). And he apologized profusely for waking his friend up in such a way. After a half-awake and mostly mumbled rant about inconsiderate hosts, stubbed toes and lost sleep, Danny had gone back to sleep on the couch. Steve had spent the rest of the night awake, sitting up in bed afraid to go back to sleep in fear of having the dream again.

After that first night, he'd been extremely careful not to wake his friend and was almost thankful for the increasingly loud volume of the TV. It not only kept him awake on nights he felt the nightmare lurking in his subconscious, but it also drowned out anything he said upon suddenly waking if he were lucky enough to get some sleep. Eventually though, the too loud volume of the TV kept him awake more often than was healthy and he'd gone down to speak to his friend about it.

The morning after that first night at his house, beyond asking if he was alright, Danno had never spoken about the incident or the nightmare again. Steve guessed that Danny just expected Navy SEALs who'd seen a lot of action on classified missions to have the occasional bad dream. His friend was definitely not wrong about that. Even before he'd come back to Hawai'i, Steve had endured more than enough dreams about his previous missions.

But with his partner staying in the house these past few weeks, the weeks where he constantly worried Wo Fat would strike, the weeks where he felt Danny was even more in danger because they were spending a greater amount of time together than ever before… Because of that, his best friend had been the star of those damned dreams every single time he'd had one lately.

He'd been so relieved to hear that his friend had found a place so that he didn't have to hide what was going on with him from Danny anymore. And even though the place was supposedly nearby, he was beyond relief that Danny would at least be out of the immediate line of fire should his nemesis decide to openly show his face on the Islands. Hopefully his friend would move out soon even though Steve wished it didn't have to be this way. Despite their differences and the danger, he kind of liked having someone else in the house again.

Steve just wanted the dreams and the nightmares to go away, but he knew they never would. Some iteration of them would always be with him whether it was the true-to-life version where his father was killed or the one that his troubled mind was currently torturing him with almost nightly. He knew they would never go away just like he knew he would never forget the many (too many) losses of friends and family from his life due to violence.

Tonight though, there had been a new player in his nightmare. Tonight it had been Grace in the chair sobbing and begging her Danno or her Uncle Steve to come save her. Later he would attribute her being in the chair to the fact that he knew it was Danny's weekend with Grace starting that night, but at that moment all he could think was that his friend's main and most important reason for living was in that chair.

Her pleading for her Danno and sometimes for her Uncle Steve had broken his heart and torn away at his soul. He had yelled at Wo Fat. Had begged him for her life. Reminded him that she was just a child and had no part in their war.

But his enemy had calmly stated that there were no innocents and there was always collateral damage in war. That he should never have brought Detective Williams into the fray if he didn't want Grace to be in the line of fire.

Grace had screamed, "Danno!" just as the gun had fired.

He had sat bolt upright in bed yelling, then paled, and threw the covers off his body. Stumbling quickly to the bathroom, he just barely made it to the toilet before he threw up every last thing in his stomach.

By the time he was finished, he was shaky and it felt like his stomach had turned inside out. Belatedly he remembered his guest downstairs and hoped he hadn't made too much noise. Although, with how loud his TV was tonight, Steve was amazed he'd been able to fall asleep in the first place. If Danny wasn't already up here checking on him, then Steve didn't think anything short of an explosion would disturb his partner tonight.

He was a long time sitting on the tile floor trying to calm his heart, his breathing and his mind. He succeeded at two of the three before finally and almost drunkenly getting up off the floor. Grabbing onto the edge of the sink, he tried to let its solid presence steady him some more, but his mind just wouldn't stop.

His 'righteous vendetta' had killed Grace – or at least it had in his dreams. How long before something like this happened in reality?

Danny would never forgive him if Grace was ever hurt because of Steve's crusade against Wo Fat. And the SEAL would never, _ever_ forgive himself if his friend's daughter was hurt because of his actions. He'd rather eat his own gun first than have anything happen to that little girl.

At the door of his bathroom he peered over at his clock and saw that it was only 0247 hours. He should try to get back to sleep but realized that was no longer in the cards for him this night. This time he'd only managed about three hours of sleep before the nightmare had catapulted him awake.

The residual images of Grace's mutilated body in that damned chair and her blood splattered on the wall next to her continued to ping-pong around in his head. They were still too much for him and the sudden idea of Danny finding Grace's body drove him back to his knees in front of the toilet once more. This time though there was nothing left in his stomach and it was only ten minutes of dry heaves that he had endured.

There was no doubt in his mind that Wo Fat was sadistic and psychotic enough to involve a little girl in this 'feud' between them and he had to prevent that somehow. He had to get the bastard focused only on him and to shift that focus away from his loved ones.

Grace's death would not only kill Danny, it would destroy Steve's 'ohana and likely end up killing him too. Nothing would ever be the same again and it would all be his fault. He was the one to bring such a vicious enemy into his friends' lives. Steve was the one so determinedly keeping on Wo Fat's trail and encouraging his team to do the same. If anything ever happened, it would be on him alone.

Eventually he felt stable enough to stand without holding onto the sink and he splashed generous amounts of cold water onto his face in an effort to dispel the disturbing images refusing to leave the forefront of his mind. But it was no use. Grace's death, though just a nightmare, was now forever imprinted on his freakish brain.

After swishing some mouthwash to rid himself of the disgusting taste of bile in his mouth, he stumbled out of his bathroom. Feeling the need to retreat to the sanctuary of his private beach and hoping in vain to get away from the images currently haunting him, he grabbed a t-shirt off the chair near his bed and left his room. In his haste, he gave no thought to the fact that he'd left his bed unmade – something highly unusual for him after years and years of being in the habit of preparing for room inspections in the Navy.

Once downstairs, he silently detoured to the kitchen, quietly grabbed a bottle of water, and snuck past a sleeping Danny before heading out to the chairs down by the shore. The last couple of weeks he'd forced himself to not indulge in the calming sounds of the sea and stayed in his room for fear of waking and worrying his friend, but tonight's nightmare demanded he be out here.

He sat down and opened the bottle, only managing a couple of sips of water before his stomach began protesting. He set it down in the sand next to his chair thinking he'd try to drink some more later.

In the near darkness, he stared out into the ocean unable to completely relax. An unknown amount of time later, he shivered and wished he'd thought of bringing a t-shirt outside with him only to discover he had one tightly clutched in his hand. How had he opened the water bottle and _not_ _noticed_ the shirt in his hand?

Forcing himself to relax his hand, the muscles protested at first until he rubbed the feeling back into his fingers. He stood up, shook the shirt out a couple of times in an attempt to smooth out some of the wrinkles, and put it on before resuming his seat by the water.

Eventually his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could just barely see the waves roll towards the shore and break against the sand near his feet. The sounds of the ocean calmed his thoughts a little, but the images from this most recent nightmare were refusing to recede by even the smallest fraction.

Grace was innocent of all this and didn't deserve to die. He had to find a way to prevent her from becoming a casualty of this war.

The only way he could think of to prevent his 'ohana from dying at the hands of Wo Fat was to stop hunting him down. Stop his and Five-0's investigations. Stop everything and let his quest for answers go. Let the justice he wanted so badly for his parents slip out of his grasp.

Compared to the lives of his 'ohana, Steve's life meant nothing. He couldn't see another way to keep them all safe other than…

Suddenly he realized he had other options open to him. One of them, his death, could end the feud. He could easily grab one of his guns and end it all right now. Without him as a catalyst, Wo Fat would have no reason to go after those Steve cared about. The flaw in this logic stream was what he knew about his team. They would probably continue his quest as some sort of memorial to him. And he would then not be around anymore to keep them safe. Grace and the others could _still_ be killed. His other idea, to return to active duty status, might also get him and his loved ones out of his enemy's sights, but again, he felt his team would continue to investigate on his behalf whether he wanted them to or not.

Staying in Hawai'i and letting it all go, letting the investigation die, seemed the only way. He had to keep them all safe – nothing else mattered.

Unless some minion of Wo Fat's committed some crime on the Islands or his enemy decided to go after him and his 'ohana directly, he would no longer actively pursue the man.

Decision made now, all he had to do was learn to live with it.

He'd never consciously chosen to give up on something before, never not completed a task he'd set out to accomplish, never not succeeded to carry out a mission given to him by his superiors. It just wasn't in his nature, and he was certainly never taught to give up – either by his father or by the Navy.

It almost physically hurt to make the decision to give up on his crusade now. But he had to. It was a choice between the dead (his parents) and the living (his 'ohana). As much as he loved his parents and wanted to find out the truth, he couldn't bear to risk the living anymore.

He had to let his crusade go and capitulate to his nemesis. There was no other choice.

ooooooo

_The end._

**ooooooo**

**A/N**: Next week in the U.S. is Thanksgiving… I hope everyone who celebrates has a safe and blessed holiday weekend. _Happy Thanksgiving_! =]

_**Thanks for reading!**_


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